Cookie

Who's taking care of whom?

He was wild and untrained when I met him. He didn’t understand a word I said, but from the beginning, I liked him.

My name is Cookie, and I’m a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

It took my human a long time to get my name right. He tried all sorts of other sounds first, but when he finally said something recognizably close to the right one, I responded.

We’ve been together for more than a year now, and I’ve expended a lot of effort training him. He’s making progress, but humans are notoriously slow. I know because my neighbor Sadie and I compare notes whenever we meet along the fence line.

She assures me my human isn’t unusually dense, like I thought. Just average.

Before I met him, I lived with my family, all my sisters and me. I knew it would change someday. I wasn’t naive. I’d heard the rumors.

And then the day came.

I was a little groggy when I met him. I’d just awakened from my after-lunch, pre-mid-afternoon nap. We all ran out to find a funny-smelling stranger there. Being friendly by nature, I danced and wagged my tail to introduce myself. He picked us up one by one and tried to talk to us.

I was the last one, and since I was still drowsy, I tried to fall asleep in his lap. That might explain what happened next. Before I knew it, I found myself in some kind of traveling case, with this human making strange noises at me in a completely unintelligible barking babble.

Having little choice in the matter, I went along for the ride.

I was kind to him, but even then, he seemed overly agitated when I left small gifts around the house. It was necessary. A girl has to mark her territory, you know. It took several months to train him to recognize my signals for going outside.

His language acquisition skills were paltry. After a full year of instruction, he still only understands maybe a dozen words.

Frankly, I expected better of him.

Still, he’s grown on me.

We’re friends now. We go places together. Take walks together. Share meal times. Even sleep in the same bed.

That last part required patience to bring about. He just didn’t get it at first. But I was persistent.

He insisted I sleep somewhere else, but I knew from conversations with other dogs that this was a common human misunderstanding. So I explained the situation, the only way humans seem to understand.

I whined.

I waited until he was asleep and then began my presentation. The louder he snored, the louder I explained.

At first, he tried putting me in another room. Amateur move. I simply increased the volume. However, none of my efforts seemed to work until we visited other humans. I think he didn’t want me waking them up, so he pulled me into bed with him.

Finally.

Humans can be so pigheaded, can’t they? But with steady training, they usually come around.

When the days got warmer, we were both sick for a while. He took me to a place where the humans seemed friendly, but they got me drunk. When I woke up, I had a hangover, and my stomach hurt. To make matters worse, there was a large plastic cone around my head. It felt like I’d stuck my head into an RCA Victrola and couldn’t get it out.

It was humiliating.

After several days of persistent persuasion, my human, so slow on the pickup, finally relented and removed my cone of shame.

Just in time, too, because he needed me. He was sick as well. A girl just knows these things. He’d been leaving me at home every morning for weeks, and seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. He didn’t have his old vim and vigor.

But as the days got hotter, we both gradually improved. Me first. Then him eventually. The days were beginning to get short again before I began to feel comfortable with his health.

One day before the leaves changed colors, he took me to a pet “resort’ and left me there for days. It didn’t seem much like a resort to me. No swimming pools. No buffets. No dancing at night.

The humans were likable, but I’ve never met one I didn’t want to jump on and lick. We’d play in the sun, but then they’d take me back to my room and ignore me. To make matters worse, I had to share them with the other dogs, and to my horror, even a few cats.

Cats. Can you believe it? And they called it a resort.

The next time I saw travel bags appear, I knew exactly what was happening. When we returned home after that one, I made sure to communicate my feelings by leaving a few blood-pressure-raising gifts on the floor.

My strategy proved effective.

He started taking me along with him sometimes. We travel in his big crate on wheels. I curl up and watch him or pretend to sleep while he does God knows what all day long.

We’ve even visited a faraway place where other humans I recognize live. He talks about the little humans who live there using a word that starts with a familiar growling sound: “grrrr.”

There are three of these “Grrr’s,” each a different size. I assume they’re his puppies and will be fully grown next year. They approach me with equal parts curiosity and caution, but by the end of the visit, I’m close to having them trained enough to walk with me. They seem to learn so much faster than the human I live with.

Back home during the recent cold months, he tries to play with me. I have some new toys like the puppies do. We play, and I let him chase me. He throws a ball and expects me to bring it back to him. That’s ridiculous.

It’s my ball.

If he wants a ball, let him get his own. He’s free to chase after me to try and take mine, if he wants, but I see no reason to make it easy for him. But then I remember he’s not a dog, and doesn’t really understand these things. So, occasionally, out of kindness, I let him have it. Training humans requires encouragement from time to time.

During the cold weather, it snowed, and I liked playing in it. But one day we had rain that froze into ice. That was different. All day long, he kept opening the door and pushing me out to do my thing, but I kept running back in. It was a little game we played until mid-afternoon when the rain finally stopped.

I won. I finally went on my terms, but when I got outside, nothing smelled right, and my paws kept slipping. I found it’s really hard to squat gracefully on ice.

Nowadays, when he gets ready to go somewhere, I run to my big comfy crate. Inside, there’s always a toy to play with and something soft to sleep on. He closes me in, and I feel strangely content. I sleep most of the time he’s gone. When he returns, I’m ready to play, but he insists on taking me outside first.

He’s such a good boy like that. I don’t even have to remind him anymore.

Sometimes it almost seems like he’s trying to talk to me. Such a pity. I can’t underst….

SQUIRREL! SQUIRREL! BARK! BARK! SQUIRREL!

SQUIRREL!

…Sorry about that. It’s my job to protect humans from squirrel attacks. I’m always on paw patrol.

As I was saying, I can’t understand a thing he says. But when I look into his eyes, we can communicate. His soft, cool slate-blue eyes are expressive. Sometimes they fill with tears at odd moments, and he seems sad, which makes me sad too. But much more often, they’re smiling at me.

And when they smile, I feel something warm inside my furry chest.

Still, he’s such an odd creature. He feeds birds but doesn’t want me to chase them. He knows a rabbit lives in the backyard, yet seems uninterested in hunting it. He showers under a waterfall but doesn’t want me to join him.

And he becomes strangely emotional if I chew on anything he doesn’t give me.

He’s so uptight.

Sadie says warmer weather will return soon. I can already smell the change in the air. My human seems completely unaware of it because his nose doesn’t work properly. He doesn’t even notice how good his food smells, or the sweet fragrance of the flowers he brings home, or how not-so-sweet some of his bathroom visits are.

At least I take mine outside. I’ve tried to explain that he should do the same, but he remains stubbornly confused.

Typical man.

I’m fully grown now, though I’m not very big. I’m not like Sadie or even Miles behind the big wooden fence, so I keep asking for more food. I want to be big like them, but once again, my human isn’t getting the idea.

Nevertheless, despite all his shortcomings and the work he requires, I like him. I like him a lot.

In fact, I might even love him.

Of course, he doesn’t understand that concept. Sometimes I’m not sure I do either. But sometimes love shows up unexpectedly when you spend enough time together, as we do. You think you’re taking care of them, but then you notice they’ve really been quietly taking care of you all along.

And inexplicably, I think he loves me too. Whenever I look into his eyes, I can see it because they’re smiling back at me.

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Did you ever have a pet like Cookie who could have written this story? One that seemed to understand you better than most people? One who pads quietly into the room, curls up beside you, and stays?

Until next time, be grateful for the companions, big and small, you’ve had along the road.